Selected quad for the lemma: heart_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heart_n	depart_v	evil_a	unbelief_n	2,143	5	10.6595	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59788	An answer to a late scandalous pamphlet entituled A friendly debate between Satan and Sherlock, written by Thomas Danson by William Sherlock ...	Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1677 (1677)	Wing S3262; ESTC R31818	41,442	72

severity upon the Israelites Heb. iii. 7 8 9 c. To day if you will hear his voice harden not your hearts as in the provocation as in the day of temptation in the wilderness when your Fathers tempted me proved me and saw my works forty years wherefore I was grieved with that generation and said they do always err in their hearts and have not known my ways so I sware in my wrath they shall not enter into my rest take heed Brethren lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God But exhort one another daily while it is called to day lest any of you be hardned through the deceitfulness of sin And in Heb. xii 15 16 17. he presses the same exhortation from the example of Esau who for one morsel of bread sold his birth-right for ye know how that afterward when he would have inherited the blessing he was rejected for he found no place for Repentance though he sought it earnestly with tears And our Saviour gives us the same account in the Parable of the foolish Virgins who were not prepared to entertain the Bridegroom when he came Matth. xxv 1 2 c. which he concludes with this inference Watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour wherein the son of man cometh v. 13. From all which it evidently appears that though God be very good to all his Creatures yet he has limited a time to the exercise of his Grace and Mercy beyond which he will not extend his goodness to those who neglect their day and proper season of Grace The longest period that any Christians own is the day of our life though some of the most Zealous Patrons of the Divine Goodness think it no reproach to the goodness of God to make it shorter and to assert that some men may out-sin the day of Grace even in this life and some of those places I have now mentioned seem very strongly to insinuate some such thing which is a very powerful Argument against the delays of our Repentance and should make us very cautious of contracting such habits of vice as may make the Grace of God ineffectual to us So that though God be very good to all his Creatures that is not sufficient to prove the Devil to be in as good a capacity of Salvation as mankind unless he can withal prove that the Devils day of Grace and Salvation is not yet past and when he does that he shall hear more from me I have insisted the longer on this because it is a sufficient answer to this whole Pamphlet and whoever can but carry this in his mind will easily discover the Sophistry of all the rest for if the Devils time be past his condition is equally hopeless and desperate let the terms of Salvation be what they will And since our Author has put me in mind of an old Maxim Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora I shall not trace the Devil through all his turnings and labyrinths but taking that account which he gives of his hope of Salvation from my Principles and supposing it at the present to be a true account which as you shall hear more afterwards is far from being so shall show you what a silly Devil this is and that his Doctrine of signs and evidences is much more foolish and absurd than ever the wildest Fanatic Preached to a doubting Soul we find all his grounds to hope for Salvation put together at the end of this Pamphlet p. 43. c. As First That God is so good that he designs and desires the happiness of all his Creatures and therefore mine this I have already answered and that answer will answer all the rest II. That Gods will in that design is not Arbitrary having no reason but it self for such a will would destroy all the perfections of Gods nature Answ. But his will is governed by the Laws of Wisdom and Justice and Holiness and that will serve to condemn bad men and evil spirits and to pass an irrevocable sentence on them and it seems our Author thinks and that very right that an Arbitrary will which acts for no other reason but because it will would give the Devil more hopes of Salvation for if God have no reason to damn the Devil but because he will it is possible he may alter his mind when there is no reason why he should not and as well save as damn them without any Reason III. That Holiness in the Creature is the reason of the determination of his love to any particular persons Answ. What comfort is this to the Devil who is a very wicked and impure Spirit and therefore cannot expect that God should love him for this reason if God could love him without Holiness he would have more reason to hope well IV. That this Holiness is not an effect of an Omnipotent power but of powerful Motives and Arguments and so by the use of my free will I may be Holy if I will Answ. If he call this my Principle it is a very great Calumny though it is not the first lie the Devil has told but at present suppose it to be true what powerful Motive can the Devil have to be Holy when a final and irrevocable sentence is past on him there can be no Motive to Repentance powerful without hope of Pardon and that he has none But does our Author imagine it impossible for Men or Devils to sink into such a degenerate state that the most powerful Motives cannot work on them what does the Apostle mean then by being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin having a reprobate sense and being past feeling and their Consciences seared as with a hot iron and if men may by repeated acts of sin grow so hard and incurable what shall we think of the Devils What can powerful Motives do on them If God would make any Creatures Holy by an Omnipotent and irresistible Grace there is some hope for the Devil that he might be Holy when God pleases to make him so but the most powerful Arguments will signifie nothing to such degenerate Creatures and so far as we can understand the nature of Gods judgments from the examples of Scripture for in executing judgments God reserves a Soveraignty to himself and punishes some sooner and others later and when men have made themselves ripe for judgment defers the execution of it and endures with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction yet the most usual Method is to harden those who have first hardened themselves and when men shut their eyes and stop their ears and resist all the powerful Methods of his Grace he gives them up to their wilful blindness and impenitency as an indulgent Father casts off a Son who continues obstinate and incorrigible after all the most probable ways of reclaiming him There are a great many who not without reason deny that we